Media baron who exposed honeytrap videos arrested

Hotelier-cum-media baron Jitu Soni, whose exposure of honey trap videos featuring some influential politicians and bureaucrats had sent panic waves in political as well as official circles in Madhya Pradesh in December last year, was on Sunday arrested at Gujarat-MP border, police said.

Soni, against whom 57 FIRs were filed by the local police in the aftermath of exposure of a series of videos showing some politicians and bureaucrats in compromising positions with some women, in his local Hindi daily, had been absconding for the past seven months.

The honey trapping and blackmailing scandal was busted by MP police in December last year by arresting six women and a man.

More than 1,000 sleaze videos and audios and sex chats were recovered from the lap top, pen drives and mobile phones, seized from the accused in the scandal. The police has filed two chargesheets in connection with the scandal in which six women and two men were named as accused.

The scandal came to fore when an engineer in the Indore Municipal Corporation, H Singh, lodged a complaint with police alleging that he was being blackmailed by a member of the racket who threatened to make his sleaze video with her viral if he failed to pay the money she demanded.